Sights and Sounds: Brazil
Sights and Sounds: Brazil features new work by Regina Parra, Rodrigo Cass, Cristiano Lenhardt, and Tamar Guimarães, selected by Luiza Proença.
In a country with difficulties discussing historical trauma, videos by artists Regina Parra, Rodrigo Cass, Cristiano Lenhardt, and Tamar Guimarães represent a willingness to speak out. These videos, produced in Brazil in 2009 and 2012, each confront history—through ways of speaking, interruptions of a repeated speech, silences that question a fact or image. Such efforts are valuable in a country that has had difficulties, collectively, in discussing the traumas of its past social experiences. The videos are manifestations of a willingness to speak, to open a wound, to interfere in the present, or to make public an opinion. Language—or the lack of it—in the form of text, visual element, sound, or symbol, is a tool for revisiting an event or exposing an unresolved conflict.
Luiza Proença (b. São Paulo, 1985) is an independent writer and curator based in São Paulo. She is associate curator of the 31st Bienal de São Paulo and was assistant curator of The Insides Are on the Outside at Casa de Vidro, São Paulo (2011–13) and the editorial coordinator of the 9th Bienal do Mercosul | Porto Alegre (2013).
About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video
This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.
Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.
Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.
The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.
Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs
Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.
Exhibition highlights
-
Regina Parra, still from 7,536 Steps (For a Geography of Proximity), 2012, video, sound, 20 min., 34 sec. Artwork © Regina Parra
-
Rodrigo Cass, still from Civiltà Americana (American Civilization), 2012, video, sound, 8 min., 52 sec. Artwork © Rodrigo Cass, provided by the artist and Galeria Fortes Vilaça
-
Cristiano Lenhardt, still from Flag-Raising Ceremony—Live, 2009, super-8 film, transferred to video, sound, 6 min. Artwork © Cristiano Lenhardt
-
Tamar Guimarães, still from Tropical Blow Up, 2009, video, 4 min., 45 sec. Artwork © Tamar Guimarães, provided by the artist and Galeria Fortes Vilaça